Universities are revoking offers en masse made to international applicants from countries including Nigeria and Pakistan as they fear the UK government’s visa crackdown will result in a ban on their recruiting international students.
In the first half of this year, 10.5 per cent of study visa applications to the UK ended up being withdrawn, up from 2.3 per cent in the same period last year and 0.4 per cent in 2023.
Some 40.9 per cent of prospective students from Pakistan had visa applications withdrawn in the first six months of this year, up from 3 per cent in the same period last year, according to FT analysis of Home Office data.
International students are only able to apply for a study visa after receiving an offer from a university, meaning the visa application is withdrawn if the offer is later revoked.
While visa applications can be withdrawn for other reasons, universities said the main driver had been an increase in their revoking offers.
They said this was in response to a doubling in the number of study visas being refused by the Home Office in the first six months of 2026 compared with the same period the year before, which has coincided with a tightening of rules allowing universities to sponsor overseas students.
Institutions where more than 5 per cent of prospective international students given offers subsequently have their visa applications rejected are now at risk of being banned from recruiting them, down from 10 per cent previously.
The rise in the Home Office’s rejections of study visas has been driven by a bigger increase in refusals from nationalities that the UK government suspects of using the route to make asylum claims.
This has been mirrored by universities withdrawing the offers. About 15 universities are thought to have suspended recruitment from Pakistan entirely this year, according to figures in the higher education sector.
In addition, 22.7 per cent of study visa applications from Nigeria were withdrawn in the first half of this year, up from 4.5 per cent in the first half of 2025. Bangladesh’s proportion of withdrawn applications rose from 7.1 per cent to 23.5 per cent and India’s from 1.2 per cent to 5.2 per cent.
Data from Enroly, a company that processes visa applicants, suggests that refusal rates at almost half of universities are above the 5 per cent threshold that could result in their being banned from recruiting international students.
Sir David Bell, vice-chancellor of the University of Sunderland, said: “The recent and unexpected spike in visa refusals has prompted pre-emptive action in several universities. This has involved pulling back from international markets where a tougher approach is being taken to visa applications.”
Jamie Arrowsmith, director of Universities UK International, which represents institutions recruiting abroad, acknowledged the need to maintain confidence in the immigration system but said “visa processing has become markedly less predictable”.
“Many refusals appear to rest on flawed, inconsistent and highly subjective reasoning, forcing universities to withdraw offers at scale to avoid breaching compliance thresholds,” he added.
With overseas applications falling because of tougher visa rules and international competition for students, universities fear losing a crucial source of revenue.
Vanessa Wilson, chief executive of University Alliance, a group of 20 professional and technical universities, said: “This is going to result in restructures, which inevitably results in job losses, course closures, campus closures.”
Universities cite examples of visas rejected because applicants had previously considered studying in other countries or because a PhD applicant could not name course modules, even though they do not exist for such research degrees.
Professor Steven McGuire, deputy vice-chancellor of the University of East Anglia, said the institution began to withdraw offers from certain countries at the end of last year after visa refusals increased markedly.
“We were getting some very arbitrary and ill-informed refusals,” he said. “We had one where the interviewer did not seem to understand that UEA was in Norwich [and so rejected the applicant for not knowing where they were going to study].”
He warned the policy’s effect is for all universities to “double down on China and India” where refusal rates are lower, and that as international fee income falls, universities are “running out of options except a very significant resizing of the sector”.
Professor James Miller, vice-chancellor of the University of the West of Scotland, and convener of Universities Scotland, said some refusals were “extremely spurious” and the Home Office had given “no real explanation [for the increase] other than concern about number of students claiming asylum”.
He said some universities had “stopped recruiting from certain geographical areas to keep refusal rates below 5 per cent”.
Many would have a drop of more than 20 per cent in overseas student numbers this year, making job cuts “inevitable” if nothing changed, he added: “It’s harming the UK’s reputation, it’s contrary to other government policies and at an individual level it’s denying opportunity to people who want to advance their careers and their lives.”
The Home Office said that while international students “make a positive contribution” to Britain, “this must not be at the expense of recruiting responsibly, in turn protecting the integrity of our immigration system”, offering universities “support where needed to improve recruitment practices”.